The present invention relates a monitoring system with low power usage.
Referring to FIG. 1, a typical building environment includes many different pieces of equipment with that consume energy, such as motors, lighting, refrigeration, heating, air conditioning, and other industrial manufacturing devices. Each of these devices consumes energy which results in an overall cost to purchase the energy for these devices from a power source, such as a utility. Each of these devices also has an operational lifetime that can be extended by remaining within the designed operational parameters. With the ever increasing complexity of equipment and cost of such energy, there is significant pressure for an organization to monitor the energy usage and performance of the equipment so that equipment life may be extended and further cost effective energy reductions may be identified.
Demand side management programs have been deployed for large industrial environments resulting in replacing high energy consumption lighting devices with low energy consumption lighting devices, and replacing standard drive motors with variable frequency drive motors. While such replacement of energy consuming devices is one aspect of an energy conservation program, it does not provide an effective on-going monitoring of the energy consumption or the equipment's operational parameters.
Referring to FIG. 2, another monitoring system may involve installing a plurality of sensing devices, such as a power meter, each proximate a corresponding piece of equipment. Each of the power meters may include a set of sensors that sense the current and/or voltage provided to the respective power devices. Each of the power meters may include a set of registers that stores information regarding the current, voltage, phase, and/or power usage over time. A set of network cabling is provided from each of the power meters to a centralized power metering device or otherwise using a local wireless connection, such as IEEE 802.11 WiFi, to create a local network. The centralized power metering device may query each the power metering devices, as desired. In response to the query, the power meters provide responsive information to the centralized power metering device. In many cases, the centralized power metering device provides responsive information, to a centralized monitoring system, such as a management console using the Internet. Unfortunately, such a power monitoring system is expensive to install into existing infrastructures.
Similarly, operating devices with built-in sensors and diagnostic or control interfaces may be monitored by systems connected over a local network. They may also be monitored via telecommunications lines and modems that operators can dial in to in order to control the device directly, or modify or view the operational data of the device. These methods typically require human operator involvement to interact with and manipulate the device settings and view the registers. This is a time-intensive and expensive process, both when considering the cost of installing the monitoring infrastructure, and the personnel costs of operating such a fleet of devices when they extend into the thousands and tens of thousands.
The foregoing and other objectives, features, and advantages of the invention may be more readily understood upon consideration of the following detailed description of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.